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SharkLaser writes "In a leaked letter sent to Spain's outgoing President, the US ambassador warned that if Spain didn't pass SOPA-like file-sharing site blocking law, Spain would risk being put into United States trade blocklist. United States government interference in Spain's intellectual property laws have been suspected for a long time, and now the recent leaks of diplomatic cables confirm this. Apart from the cables leaked earlier, now another cable dated December 12th says U.S. expresses 'deep concern' over the failure to implement SOPA-style censorship law in the country. 'The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain,' read the letter. Racing against the clock in the final days of the government, Solomont had one last push. 'I encourage the Government of Spain to implement the Sinde Law immediately to safeguard the reputation of Spain as an innovative country that does what it says it will, and as a country that breeds confidence,' he wrote."

First I'm an American, I live in the US always have. I'm am just fed up with my government. How in the hell can they be so disconnected, and how in the hell do they expect to impose their will on other nations. Fucking hell isn't that what the initial settlers came over here to get away from?

Germany has twice as external debt than Spain, same the UK, France... even the US has much more external debt than Spain proportionally, in case you think the US is not bankrupt. Spain's problem is a very high rate of unemployement, their debt is relatively small. Amazed of how easy is to be absolutely misinformed nowadays.

It looks, from this mini article [engadget.com] (since noone seems willing to link to either the letter, or the law), like its more akin to the DMCA takedown provision. A content holder feels like their content is being illegally shared, they pass that on to a commission which determines if the case is actionable; if so, that is passed onto a judge.

Which, to my mind, sounds about right. Im not clear on why the commission is necessary, except perhaps to weed out unnecessary cases; but regardless it sounds like the courts do get involved.

Powerless? You are not.
Come back and tell me that after you get a big chunk of population marching on the streets and getting shot for it. In Syria people are powerless. So the government officials you guys elected don't act like they should?? Mass protest / strike till they are out of office. Until you try such things and fail you ARE NOT POWERLESS.

We're the insensitive clods:-(. I find this so embarrassing - SOPA has like 15% public support and we're pushing it on other countries? *sigh* The worst part is that even though we can vote in new politicians, our electorate is completely broken; and I have no idea how to fix that...

More outrageous details: they carefully worded the law so that there are two judges involved in the process of closing a web page. And all they do is checking the paperwork is correctly done, not if the page should be closed or not!! Go figure... any web page the commission says is against someone's intellectual property will be closed in a hat's drop, and only after a pair of years fighting in the courts it will be ruled if the web page should come back or not. A pair of years, literally!! That's way too much for someone's starting a new bussiness on the net. This law is just a workarround since the judges in Spain where issuing "not guilty" to every filesharing case, since in spanish law filesharing was legal as long as you wasn't making money in the process.

And worst of all, there are so many fires in Spain right now, there's literally not enough people to fight back, because they are fighting back too many problems at the same time! Did you know Spain's health care system was universal and free as in beer (read paid through taxes), and they are trying to turn it into USA style private health care system? And that's just the iceberg tip...

Exactly. Let's not forget how Allison Halataei and Lauren Pastarnak whored themselves out to the RIAA/MPAA straight out of Lamar Smith's office. No waiting period to dispel any appearance of impropriety. They know it doesn't matter, just follow the money because the corruption is so ingrained.

Actually, you are wrong. Spain has a GDP foreign debt of 284% and Germany has a GDP foreign debt of 176%. The US have 101%, and they are in much better finantial shape than many strong countries in EU.
Spain also has a complex, almost non-regulated, mutualist banking system (Caixas), and very poor performance in the EU stress tests. The only reason Spain has no interest to the IMF/European Fund is because most of the foreign debt is held by Germany and the UK, and a rescue operation would imply much more money than what the European Fund had avaliable, and would cause a direct hit in both UK's and Germany's banking companies.
I used as reference the following infographic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696 [bbc.co.uk]

Actually, you are wrong. Spain has a GDP foreign debt of 284% and Germany has a GDP foreign debt of 176%. The US have 101%, and they are in much better finantial shape than many strong countries in EU.

The "Foreign debt to GDP" numbers reflects the relative size of the countries financial systems and should not be seen as liabilities as this debt is collateralized. The better numbers to compare for "financial shape" are the "Govt debt to GDP" levels, respectively 67%, 83% and 100%. Additionally one should look at the current account [wikipedia.org] for the countries in question. This shows a why Spain is in trouble even if its debt to GDP ratio is relatively small (67%).

Wait... you mean we are the baddies?
That must explain the skulls on our hats.

For anyone not familiar with the paraphrased quote above, I *highly* recommend you watch the source of the quote, this short clip [youtube.com] from That Mitchell and Webb Look, one of the funnier British comedy duos of recent years.